Jennifer Lawrence's spy thriller Red Sparrow is in cinemas now, and in it she gets repeatedly abused, assaulted and tortured, and yet still manages to walk out alive at the end. It's quite the ordeal. No less so is her experience in last year's mother! (though she doesn't fare quite as well in that one).
Movies don't have to be in the horror genre to put their lead characters through the ringer before the closing credits wrap – here are some of the poor onscreen bastards who really had to suffer for their art. Our only stipulation was that they had to survive – so no Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ or any other Mel Gibson production.
WARNING - SPOILERS AND DISTURBING CLIPS FOLLOW.
1. Phil Connors in Groundhog Day
Romantic comedy this may be on paper, but Bill Murray's deadpan news anchor suffers way more than most in his quest for redemption, living the same day over and over again until he gets it right.
Classic (ish) fairy tale fare except for the fact that the movie takes a dark turn into the realms of existential despair quite quickly, when Phil repeatedly tries to kill himself.
"I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted and burned," he says, "I am an immortal". He might be immortal but that doesn't mean he can't feel pain.
2. Ash in Evil Dead II
It's ordeal enough to be holed up in a cabin in the woods besieged by Deadites (for a second time! Well that's just bad luck...) after having been attacked by, and having to behead, his own girlfriend. But now Ash (Bruce Campbell) gets attacked by his own severed hand and is mocked by possessed inanimate objects from the cabin, before he himself becomes possessed.
After a prolonged ordeal where he ends up attaching a chainsaw to his stump and eventually banishing the forces of evil, he doesn't end up in a nice hot bath but in a mediaeval desert, where he has to battle Deadites all over again. Worst vacation ever.
3. Rama in The Raid
The technical term for the injuries that Rama (Iko Uwais) suffers across the course of The Raid is "beaten to shit". But that's what you get when you have to fight your way up through an entire apartment block filled with all sorts of nefarious people to get to the drug lord who runs it.
He gets in numerous fist fights, battles with people wielding machetes and jumps out of a window with only an unfortunate henchman to break his multi-storey fall.
And if that wasn't enough, Rama only comes back for more punishment in The Raid 2. Poor guy.
4. Alabama in True Romance
Patricia Arquette's Alabama is a call girl paid to chat up Christian Slater's Elvis fan, but she accidentally falls in love with him, landing her in a world of crime and punishment. The punishment comes most notably in the form of a scene where Alabama is severely beaten at the hands of James Gandolfini's mobster Virgil in an attempt to get information from her. She endures and survives but it's super uncomfortable watching.
5. Deputy Dewey in Scream
Poor old Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) is just a good-natured, loveable local cop who's not taken seriously by the residents of Woodboro until he has to go up against the murderous and mysterious 'ghost face killer'.
In the original script Dewey was supposed to be stabbed to death, but test audiences liked the character so much that he was allowed to survive the stabbing and return for all three sequels, giving him space to be stabbed again, repeatedly, and have his head bashed in with a bedpan by subsequent copycat killers.
6. Ryan Stone in Gravity
This one could be seen as an allegory, in which Sandra Bullock's grief-stricken astronaut must go through a super-human ordeal and choose to survive in order to be reborn. Still, watching the movie feels a bit like being stuck in an emotional (and actual) washing machine.
First her shuttle is damaged and she's pinged off into space and almost dies. Then she reaches the international space station and realises it's been evacuated and she can't get her back home. Then she and the only other survivor, George Clooney, try to reach the Chinese space station and her only companion dies. Then there's a fire, then she nearly suffocates, and even when you think things are going to be okay, she nearly drowns. Never mind her, we were exhausted by the end.
7. The Narrator in Fight Club
When Ed Norton's nameless protagonist sets up a club that you do not talk about with his pal Tyler Durden, to allow men to express their manliness by beating each other up, it comes as little surprise that he takes a lot of punishment.
And then – spoiler alert! – it turns out that he is Tyler Durden and was actually beating himself up all along. Of course, the only solution is for him to shoot himself in the face. But don't worry, he lives to tell the tale.
8. Anakin in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
It was always going to come to this. The annoying little kid from The Phantom Menace (by way of Hayden Christensen) completes his transformation into the "more machine now than man" Darth Vader by having his legs cut off at the knee and being left to burn at the side of a lava flow.
Luckily the newly minted Emperor was there to rebuild him so that he could massacre Rebel scum for many more years to come.
9. The old boy in Oldboy
Business man Oh Dae-su wakes in a sealed hotel room not knowing where he is, being fed dumplings through the door. So far, so sounds totally relaxing… cut to 15 years later though, and he's still there while his wife has been murdered and he has no idea of the whereabouts of his daughter.
And his ordeal has only just begun – before the end of the movie he's involved in numerous fights, eats a live octopus and cuts his own tongue out, before he's dealt a final revelatory blow that's the worst bit of all. Revenge is a dish best served way overcooked.
10. Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2
The two-part Kill Bill is arguably Quentin Tarantino's most violent film, and a large helping of that falls on the head of Uma Thurman's unfortunate ex-assassin Beatrix Kiddo. She's shot in the head on her wedding day, left in a coma for four years – during which time she is raped repeatedly – blasted with a shotgun full of rock salt and buried alive.
And still she lives to bump off the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and, yes, kill Bill.
11. John Rambo in First Blood
Wandering loner John Rambo's abuse at the hands of the police would be rough enough even if it didn't initiate flashbacks to him being tortured during the Vietnam War. Going on the run from the police brutality involves jumping off a cliff and being buried in a mine shaft by an exploding rocket. And who said that veterans don't get the respect they deserve?
